Saudi Aramco CEO weighs in on energy accessibility

Nearly 2 billion people have no access to adequate energy, more than six times the population of the United States. For Khalid Al-Falih, President and CEO of Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco), it’s important to remember this fact to avoid treating the issue of availability to energy as an abstract concept.

In addition, population growth and rising prosperity will contribute significantly to the world’s growing energy needs, he told the WEC delegates..

But Al-Falih noted that access to energy and access to sources of energy are intimately linked. The world will continue to rely on fossil fuels, to which we have easy and plentiful access for the next few decades, he said. Fossil fuels provide 80 percent of the energy we consume, and will remain our main source of energy for the foreseeable future.

Even when alternative sources of energy become viable, it will still take a long time to displace the established petroleum-based resources, he said. For this reason, it is necessary to continue investing in access to hydrocarbons, and to improve performance because of our reliance on it in the next decades.

There are opportunities to make petroleum more environmentally friendly, and it is incumbent on the industry to do its utmost to find these enhancements, he argued. Al-Falih said it can reduce its emissions by investing in new plant technology, which cuts costs and conserves energy, and that enhanced energy efficiency is another way to provide access to energy. Natural gas has half the carbon emission of a similar energy unit of coal, so using more of this for power generation could further reduce carbon emissions.

Al-Falih said that consumer acceptability of energy also needed to be added to the availability equation, and that this transcends environmental issues alone. Safety, dependability, and affordability play a role, which is why coal has recently done so well, he said.

Global coal consumption remained flat in the 1990s but grew by 4.5 percent annually in the 2000s, even as environmental awareness increased. In the same period, oil consumption grew by just 1.5 percent. So consumption is not only driven by environmental policy, but also by economic growth, resource endowment and the economics of competing resources.

The world needs to recognize the interplay between increased access and acceptability, Al-Falih concluded.